Posts by Lauren Ipsum
Generally speaking, humor comes from the unexpected. You anticipate that A will happen, but B happens instead. Someone says "I want to give up cigarettes and switch to vaping." You expect that th...
The only bad ideas are the ones which stop you from finishing the book. Write and edit if you like. Write halfway and edit. Write the whole thing blindfolded. Write only at night, or only during a...
I am in favor of rules and coherence. However, also remember that you do not have to show all your work. Just because you as the writer/creator know how magic/powers work doesn't mean you have to ...
I would use the case which is in the application, to make it easier for the reader to match apples to apples. You might even add quote marks and other formatting for additional clarity: Figure ...
If your books are not standalone, a "previously on..." intro is probably a good idea. You want just enough information to orient the reader without spoiling or rehashing the previous book(s). Al...
yes, and in fact I encourage this. If it's from a child's POV, try to use a child's language, understand and perspective. Don't stress so much about what's "allowed." Do what seems to work for you...
Your characters may not have names, but they have to have some identifiers. Other examples in fiction: Star Trek's Borg use designations which specify where each drone (individual) is in the hi...
I just wanted to write a story about these two friends. So, maybe that is your theme. That friendship is beautiful, rich, enduring; that friends help each other through obstacles, or despite t...
The Carnegie Hall method: Practice, practice, practice. You know those Word-A-Day calendars? We joke about them, but they're not bad as a starting point. Each day you pick a word you want to start...
It depends on what you want to accomplish with the scene, and the character. Neither one is better writing per se. They do have slightly different tones, and slightly different meanings. "When y...
In addition to this answer here: What's the best way to show a foreign language in a manuscript? If you have a lot of swapping back and forth between two specific languages, and the characters are...
I have gone to my local bookstore to order a self-published book. I gave them the ISBN, they ordered it, it arrived a week later, I walked in and completed the transaction. The book is now on my sh...
There are two versions of "the reader can't figure out the ending." One is Sherlock Holmes, and the other is Murder by Death. In the Holmes stories, the reader doesn't necessarily see all the deta...
You have two choices that I can see, and which one you use will likely be dependent on the amount of foreign-language copy you have versus the amount of space you have in the panel to display it: ...
If you want people to sympathize or identify with a character who does awful things, then the people she's doing those things to have to be worse than her. They have to deserve the manipulation and...
I'm struggling at the moment to think of a novel which does have a subtitle (beyond "A Novel" to differentiate it from a non-fiction work). Look at the NYT Best Books of 2016. Not one novel has a...
Make it clear that it's from Character B's POV. Don't overthink it. It's okay to create a structure and break it for an effect.
Finish the story. Finish it whether it's one book, two, or five. Writing is practice for writing; editing is practice for editing. No effort is wasted. If you have two or three really good books,...
So, does the attempt to not italicize for native speakers make sense? Would having it not italicized for native points of view but italicized for non-native be reasonable? I think this is a go...
I think it's the Snowflake Structure guy who plots out his books as "Three Disasters and an Ending." He likes a four-act structure rather than three (or five as on stage). So you have your initia...
I just finished the charming short memoir from actor Cary Elwes, As You Wish, about his experiences while filming The Princess Bride. The voice sounds very much like Elwes, but the cover clearly sa...
two thoughts: 1) You don't need the while X then Y structure to convey parallel events. Just list them one after another. It's implied that they're simultaneous. 2) Separate your X and Y (the chi...
You'll find a lot of good answers here: How do you make a story succeed in spite of an unsympathetic main character? On top of that: If your character is a misanthrope out of disappointment, that...
Think of your objects first. Sit down and brainstorm a bunch of things. Things which can be hidden reasonably well in a school. Things which might have thematic links to your characters, things wh...
Organize your copy into thoughts. Break when you have a new one. Paragraphs separate lengthy copy into smaller conceptual chunks. Each paragraph is supposed to be a new thought, more or less. Whe...
